In Shoreline, we’re keen to promote the work of SF authors who are not so well known in the Anglophone world. Here, we showcase the work of the Mauritanian author Moussa Ould Ebnou who has written several novels and short stories in both French and Arabic. Ebnou’s novel Barzakh was written in French and first published in Paris in 1990, before being translated by the author himself into Arabic and published as Madinetou al-riah. Now it has been translated into English by Marybeth Timmermann and published by Iskanchi Press as Barzakh: The Land In-Between.
Barzakh is described as ‘a blend of science fiction and philosophy, an innovative masterpiece that symphonizes mysticism, religion, and Mauritanian culture into a dystopian reflection on the human condition.’ In this article, Ebnou introduces the themes in Barzakh and explores the influences upon his work.
– Pippa Goldschmidt
I write science fiction because I’m not happy with this world and, as Philip K. Dick said, ‘If you are not happy with this world, seek another world.’ I would say, quoting Heinlein and Asimov, that science fiction is ‘speculative fiction’, a ‘branch of literature concerned with human responses to advances in science and technology.’
Influence of Tradition
Barzakh, in its first and second parts, recalls periods of the past; through its hero Gara, who is a time traveller from the eleventh century to the twentieth century, thanks to the Green One who guards the sea of time and transports him to show him what humankind will become. I have inserted ancient tradition into this science fiction novel, through Greek philosophy and tragedy and through the Mauritanian folk music tradition.
A symphonic novel
Barzakh is structured like a concert of Moorish lute music which consists of three ways, the black way, the white way and the speckled way. In the novel, this becomes the Milky Way which, according to Moorish musical mythology, was invented by a ghoul, a non-human. This third part of the novel introduces extra-terrestrial characters and takes place when part of humanity has left Earth for other planets. Each part of the novel consists of five chapters and a prelude which consists of each of the voices of the lute. This intertextuality between the parts and chapters of the novel and the ways of the lute, highlight the common nature of the narrative time and the musical time, because literature and music simulate the same time, that of myth. Barzakh is therefore a symphonic novel in the proper sense.
A narrative dilemma
The Qur’anic stories help me solve the narrative dilemma of an instant in which Gara revisits his entire life that spanned ten centuries: It has been stated in the Holy Qur’an, in Surah Qaf, that this instant exists, and it is the moment of the throes of death:
﴿ وَجَآءَتۡ سَكۡرَةُ ٱلۡمَوۡتِ بِٱلۡحَقِّۖ ذَٰلِكَ مَا كُنتَ مِنۡهُ تَحِيدُ (19) وَنُفِخَ فِي ٱلصُّورِۚ ذَٰلِكَ يَوۡمُ ٱلۡوَعِيدِ (20) وَجَآءَتۡ كُلُّ نَفۡسٖ مَّعَهَا سَآئِقٞ وَشَهِيدٞج (21) لَّقَدۡ كُنتَ فِي غَفۡلَةٖ مِّنۡ هَٰذَا فَكَشَفۡنَا عَنكَ غِطَآءَكَ فَبَصَرُكَ ٱلۡيَوۡمَ حَدِيدٞ (22) وَقَالَ قَرِينُهُۥ هَٰذَا مَا لَدَيَّ عَتِيدٌ (23)﴾
The moment of agony came, and all the truth was revealed.(19) This is the Day ˹you were˺ warned of.(20) Each soul will come forth with an angel to drive it and another to testify.(21) You were totally heedless of this. Now we have lifted this veil of yours, so today your sight is sharp.(22) Here are the records ready.(23)
When the death throes arrive, time stretches to turn around, so the beginning is recalled and the truth unfolds. The story narrates this moment of truth, the moment of death, in which the past life of the dying is revealed. At this moment the hero narrates, with insight, events he lived through in a time that spanned ten centuries, judging them with insight:
…Throughout my existence, I have always tried in vain to connect my life to my dreams, my conscious to my unconscious, and my consciousness to other consciousnesses, so that I could judge others, myself, and time with cool composure. But I remained isolated, a simple monad - adjusted, protected, and absolutely cut off from everything else. And suddenly now, at the moment of my death, all these connections automatically formed with no effort on my part. In the throes of death, my dream and my life descended before me into the arena to be given an ultimate explanation, lining up in one very straight line, before sinking into the void. The entire world was piled up in a sort of little circular and transparent porthole, located just in front of me, where all enigmas and all secrets had come to be resolved and became self-evident. The past, the present, and the future had merged together into a single instant. Dying had shed its unremitting light into every corner of my life, laying bare everything I had touched. I suddenly discovered the hidden meaning of situations, the significance of each silence, every gesture and spoken word. Nothing about any being or thing escapes me now, not even their intentions. My entire life – so close, so inaccessible, and so inordinately gratuitous – was rewound and then replayed before me, a washed-up actor, an immobile spectator this time, tormented by the profound regret of having participated in this grotesque comedy…
BARZAKH: The Land In-Between, pp 10-11
The semantics of the names
When I write, I translate, I try to spread a new reality in language and terminology that transcends the rules of reception and acceptance, to produce a text that suggests new meanings of places, times, people, and terms. This translation produces new meanings that are not found in any list of terms or in any language, and leads to musical ecstasy and refers to metaphysics. The deviation of these meanings is evident when creativity crosses the borders of languages. Thus, with the name of one of the characters, Ghostbuster, is designed to sound like Aoudaghost, I go beyond languages to get to the heart of the meaning of this character’s function in the novel. The word Ghostbuster becomes the name of the head of the archaeological expedition that searches for Aoudaghost, the lost caravan city, which was buried by sand, and no one knows where it is. Three words were formed according to their sound, ‘Ghost’, ‘Buster’ and ‘Aoudaghost’ (the name of the caravan station lost in the desert) - so that ‘Ghostbuster’ becomes the name of the archaeologist in the novel, whose name means in English, ‘ghost seeker’…
My literary bilingualism
Barzakh was first written in French. For me, as for many foreign language writers, bilingualism is a legacy imposed by colonization. My use of French as a language of writing is explained by the fact that, in my country, I was educated in a French school. At first, I wrote only in French, but after the publication of this novel, I opted for literary bilingualism by self-translating my books already published in French into Arabic. Reading the two versions, French and Arabic, one wonders in which first language they were written, and one no longer knows which version to consider as the principal part. In fact, we find ourselves before a triptych whose central section is the initial unwritten version (isn’t every text the translation of an ideal text existing only in the mind of its creator, who then ‘puts it into words’ in one or more languages?) and the side panels, the French and Arabic versions. This self-translated version gives me the opportunity to find my mother tongue and, despite the complex work of the translation, I become more spontaneous in Arabic and recover authenticity. I translate myself in order to tame my linguistic duality. Self-translation, or parallel creation, can then appear as a way of transcending the split, of reconciling the two halves of the internally torn being, by making the two languages coexist harmoniously.
I have often wondered why I write in French and then translate into Arabic. I would say, following Beckett, that “my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn in two to reach the things (or the Nothingness) which are hidden behind.” By writing first in French, I seek to distance myself from what is familiar to me by distancing myself from my language. French, the foreign language, is a necessary tool to get rid of the rhetoric of the Arabic language and escape the conventions, automatisms and expressions of the mother tongue.
SF as speculative fiction is philosophical
I am a professor of philosophy, and I write science fiction like a philosopher who reasons by myth or like a mathematician who reasons by the absurd! SF as speculative fiction is philosophical. Like Platonic myths, those of science fiction can save us, if we believe them. The myths of SF reveal what was hidden from us from the start. My fiction is rooted in human anxieties in the face of the techno-scientific present, but also in hope and wonder. Today, the borders between SF and mainstream are no longer very precise, especially with respect to novels.
SF Africa, a Copernican revolution
SF can contribute to the development of African thought by transforming its methods and ideas. It can help Africans transform their mentalities to support changes and harmonize their development models. SF can produce a true Copernican revolution in African thought, and a change of perspective in that thought. In Africa, we tend to look to the past to inform our present, whereas SF can help Africans look to the future to understand their present. The stakes of the future being already in the present, SF can help produce a backward reflection that illuminates the present through the future. Another world is being built, and SF can help Africans understand and inhabit it.
* * *
Moussa Ould Ebnou, one of Mauritania’s greatest novelists, earned his Ph.D. at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, and is a philosophy professor at the University of Nouakchott in Mauritania. He has written several novels and short stories in French and Arabic. He was a consultant for the United Nations Sudano-Sahelian Office in New York and served as a cultural advisor to the Presidency of Mauritania for fifteen years.